President Putin Reminds Russia Can't Be Isolated: Total Sanctions, Soviet Union Still First In Space

Presiden Rusia Vladimir Putin. (Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru/Presidential Executive Office of Russia)

JAKARTA - Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Tuesday that efforts to isolate Moscow would fail, citing the success of the Soviet space program as proof Russia can achieve spectacular leaps forward under difficult conditions.

Russia has said it will never again rely on the West after the United States and its allies imposed crippling sanctions to punish President Putin for his February 24 orders over "special military operations" in Ukraine.

Sixty-one years since Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union made his way into the history books by becoming the first man in space, President Putin traveled to the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East, 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow.

"The sanctions are total, the isolation is complete but the Soviet Union is still the first in space," President Putin said, according to Russian state television.

"We don't mean to be isolated. It is impossible to isolate anyone in the modern world, especially a country as vast as Russia," he said.

Russia's Cold War space successes such as the Gagarin flight and the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite from Earth, are of particular relevance to Russia: both events took the United States by surprise.

The launch of Sputnik 1 prompted the United States to turn to NASA in an attempt to catch up with Moscow.

President Putin said 'special military operations' in Ukraine were necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia, including through the NATO military alliance, with Moscow having to defend Russian-speaking people in Ukraine from persecution.

President Putin further emphasized that there is no doubt Russia will achieve all its goals in Ukraine, a conflict which he considers inevitable and essential to defending Russia in the long term.

"The goal was very clear and noble. It was clear that we had no choice. It was the right decision."

It is known that Ukrainian forces have put up a tough fight and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia, in a bid to force the Kremlin to withdraw its troops.

Russia's economy is on track to contract by more than 10 percent by 2022, the biggest drop in gross domestic product since the years following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, said former finance minister Alexei Kudrin.